Hou Yi Hot Pot is now open at 97 Second Ave. between East Fifth Street and East Sixth Street...
This is the second location for Hou Yi Hot Pot, which also has a spot on Hester Street in the northern fringes of Chinatown. Serious Eats called Hou Yi "comfortable and friendly" and "This is your Manhattan Chinatown go-to for hot pot."
And at 190 Avenue B between near East 12th Street, Kingsley, a seasonal French-American restaurant, opened this past Wednesday...
Here's the Times with some thoughts on the restaurant:
Three spaces — a dining room with a long bar, a loungelike area and a back room, all softly done in neutral tones — serve the same menu that the chef Roxanne Spruance delivers from her semi-open kitchen. She worked at Blue Hill, WD-50 and Alison Eighteen. Gallic touches show through in roasted bone marrow with shallots and tarragon, monkfish with melted leeks and a chicken thigh napoleon.
Kingsley's website is here and the menus are here.
The previous restaurant at No. 190, the 7-year-old Back Forty, closed for good after service last Dec. 21.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Modern American in the works for former Back Forty space on Avenue B
A look at Kingsley, opening this fall on Avenue B
This is truly upscale. The prices are comparable to such established eateries as Gotham. If the ambitious menu meets expectations, then this will surely be a destination restaurant for foodies. I am not sure that we can think in terms of neighborhood any longer. The Avenue B of my I first knew (I came to the EV in 1966) is a thing of a now distant memory. The neighborhood is dominated by millennials ( you supply the appropriate term) for whom $100 + for a dinner is normal (I roughly calculated a meal I would like to have with my own choice of wine.)
ReplyDeleteJeez Laweeze. I am reminded of just how long I have lived here when I look at Kingsley's menu and remember that when I first moved in, the only two places to eat on upper Avenue B were a tiny Puerto Rican joint on the east side of the block between 12th and 13th where you got a giant plate of fabulous red beans and rice for two bucks, and the coffee shop on the corner of B and 14th, where a full breakfast special was 90 cents. Autre temps, autre moirs.
ReplyDeleteJesus christ. Every entree at Kingsley is over $30. How absurd.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there's anything close to that expensive around there. Guess I won't be going there. Still bummed that Back Forty is gone.
Hey yall, you can still get pizza for a dollar. Just sayin.
ReplyDeleteAnother restaurant with tortured duck liver on the menu. Jesus.
ReplyDeleteNever mind dollar pizza: Casa Adela at 5th and C is the real deal. Abuelita food!
ReplyDeleteOwned by a plastic surgeon!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.kingsleynyc.com/about/
https://www.drmonicatadros.com/
This has got to be a first east of 2nd Avenue, maybe 3rd Ave.
I came VERYCLOSE to taking this space for TSB. Walked away because the rent was just too damn high. The brokers hard sell you on how great the area is; and they're right. The location is awesome. Still doesn't justify the rent he wanted. Hot Pot people just doing what they need to do to pay the bills I guess. Wish them well.
ReplyDeleteI will never go to Kingsley even if I can afford it. I just don't want to spend that much money on food that comes with a 7 minute lecture from the server on the cooking technique, origins of each vegetable and the 46 herbs used in the sauce. I suppose the foodies will come and some fancy uptowners who are slumming it but this is yet another place for locals without a trust fund. The only silver lining is as long as this place is here there will not be a loud sports bar in that place.
ReplyDelete